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This recent inquiry, by InfoQ China editor Jacky Li, picked 5 very different cases of Scrum adoption in China, which got different results, and asked: Why did you use Scrum? How did you adopt it? What problems did you encounter, and why did it succeed or fail? Despite the small sample size, it's an interesting comparison, pointing out that improvement doesn't ensure success.
Most Scrum adopters have their first doubt in terms of its scalability. Tobias Mayer suggests that before looking into quick solutions for complex problems, adopters should focus on understanding the principles of Scrum. Once the foundation is correctly laid, Scrum will take care of scaling itself.
Trying to explain the benefits of Agile Software Development to your CIO? Does your boss want some outside validation? Esther Schindler asked more than 50 developers and Agile practitioners one question: "If you could get the boss to understand one thing, just one thing, related to agile development...what would it be? Why that?".
"But does Agile scale?" Emerging stories and case studies indicate that it certainly does. InfoQ brings you two excerpts from Dean Leffingwell's book "Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises". Chapter 1 presents how Agile methods respond to the need for competitive advantage, and Chapter 2 revisits "Why the Waterfall Model Doesn’t Work".
It's easy to forget what originally motivated us, once we're implementing Agile. Teams spin, trying to figure out which practices to start with, unsure which will have the biggest impact, or how they fit together. Amr Elssamadisy and John Mufarrige propose a customized adoption approach to help teams decide where to focus first - an alternative to adoption of pre-packaged methodologies.
Management consultant Johanna Rothman helps her clients manage risk: be it risk in a project's people, risk in how the people are managed, or the risk in the projects themselves. In this interview she talked about strategies for risk reduction, useful for teams in all stages of agility, contained in her new book "Manage It! Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management."
InfoQ presents a one hour video from the APLN Leadership Summit at Agile2006, where a panel of business leaders spoke about their experiences: Bud Phillips (Capital One Financial), Israel Ganot (BMC Software), Steven Ambrose (DTE Energy), Peter George (Cronos Inc.). Topics included top-down vs. bottom-up adoption, making the leap of faith to enterprise adoption and the value of the PMO.
Here is a story about Agile's use in a governmental organisation: at the 2006 APLN Leadership Summit Mark Salamango and John Cunningham looked at the problems and opportunities of introducing Agile in Army environments. True Agile practices cannot be 'commanded' or 'directed’ but frequent delivery offers Agile leaders a "soft" kind of power that is, in fact, very effective.
In this offbeat presentation from Agile2006, Jean Tabaka compares impediments and obstacles encountered by an Agile mentor with those detailed in Homer's classic. In this 73 minutes presentation, discover who plays which classical roles in Agile adoption: Cyclops, the Sirens, Poseidon, Circe, Cicones, the Lotus-Eaters, and even the good-and-faithful dog Argus.
For those getting started with Agile, this book offers a detailed first-person account of how one Swedish company implemented Scrum and XP with a distributed team of 40 people, and how they continuously improved their process over a year’s time.
This book guides the reader on crafting their own agile adoption strategy focused on their business values and environment. This strategy is then directly tied to patterns of agile practice adoption that describe how many teams have successfully (and unsuccessfully) adopted them. Business values are also a component of these patterns so your adoption is always focused on addressing your particular environment.
